A.Word.A.Day --formous

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Today's Word

formous

PRONUNCIATION:

(FOR-muhs)

MEANING:

adjective: Beautiful.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin formosus (beautiful, handsome), from forma (form, shape, beauty). Earliest documented use: c. 1450.

NOTES:

Taiwan was formerly known in the West as Formosa, from Portuguese Ilha Formosa (beautiful island). Portuguese sailors sighted the island in the 16th c., reached for an adjective, and chose well.

USAGE:

“She is a model of beauty and loveliness, of fairest favour and formous form, and dight [adorned] with symmetry and perfect grace.”
Richard F. Burton, trans.; The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night; Kama Shastra Society; 1885.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. -Pearl S. Buck, novelist, Nobel laureate (26 Jun 1892-1973)

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